The Chican@ Hip Hop Nation

The population of Mexican-origin peoples in the United States is a diverse one, as reflected by age, class, gender, sexuality, and religion. Far from antiquated concepts of mestizaje, recent scholarship has shown that Mexican@/Chican@ culture is a mixture of indigenous, African, and Spanish and other European peoples and cultures. No one reflects this rich blend of cultures better than Chican@ rappers, whose lyrics and iconography can help to deepen our understanding of what it means to be Chican@ or Mexican@ today. While some identify as Mexican mestizos, others identify as indigenous people or base their identities on their class and racial/ethnic makeup. No less significant is the intimate level of contact between Chican@s and black Americans. Via a firm theoretical foundation and a collection of vibrant essays, Pancho McFarland explores the language and ethos of Chican@/Mexican@ hip hop and sheds new light on three distinct identities reflected in the music: indigenous/Mexica, Mexican nationalist/immigrant, and street hopper. With particular attention to the intersection of black and Chicano cultures, the author places exciting recent developments in music forms within the context of progressive social change, social justice, identity, and a new transnational, polycultural America.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Foreword

Music has long been a part of rebellion and revolution in society, and
it was part of both the American and the French Revolution. Years later, the spiritual
songs of African Americans helped guide runaway slaves to the North, eluding
pursuers and ultimately capture and a return to slave status. In the 1930s and ’40s,
Woody Guthrie and other musicians sang about the lives of the less fortunate in...

Preface

The Chican@ Hip Hop Nation: Politics of a New Millennial Mestizaje
developed as a means to answer a number of questions that I have been asking for
many years. As a light-skinned Chicano with an Irish father and last name, I have
recognized the diversity within the Mexican-origin population for as long as I can
remember and have felt strangely uncomfortable with the racial orthodoxy that...

Acknowledgments

I. Setting the Theoretical Context

Juan Zarate’s song “Café,” examining the identities and ethno-racial
history of people of Mexican descent in the United States, is my starting point for
an examination of how a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century generation
of Mexicans in the United States understand themselves. I examine hip-hop as an
important site of Chican@/Mexican@ identity construction and self-representation...

2. Barrio Logos: The Sacred and Profane Word of Chicano Emcees

Logos is the word. It is truth. It is reason. It is the logic by which a
people understand their world. It is epistemology, a way of knowing. Th e word is
sacred. In the Popol Vuh the world was created through the act of speaking; so, too,
in the Bible. Allah revealed the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad orally and in
rhymed prose. Muslims sing their word prayers. Chican@/Mexican@ emcees, like...

II. Identities Old and New

3. Sonido Indígena: Mexica Hip-Hop and Masculine Identity

Many Chican@/Mexican@ hip-hop musicians identify racially and ethnically
as indigenous and/or Mexica.1 Their music reflects the spiritual and political
identity first broadly developed in the mid-1960s by militant Chican@ youth,
particularly influenced by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez’s poem “Yo Soy Joaquin.”
Th ese artists update and add to Chican@ indigenism from their position in the...

4. Paísas, Compas, Inmigrantes: Mexicanidad in Hip-Hop

This chapter seeks to address similar questions as the previous. Here,
instead of a neo-indigenist Mexican diasporic youth identity, I examine what I call a
Mexican national identity and an immigrant identity. Mexican-born youth who have
spent most of their lives in the United States (the 1.5 generation) have concerns and
issues that diff er from the urban Chicano neo-indigenous youth or other U.S.-born...

5. Barrio Locos: Street Hop and Amerikan Identity

The very existence of the Chican@/Mexican@ presents a challenge to
“America.” Th eir existence means the United States has to deal with its colonial past.
Th ese descendants of Native American people were on this continent first. In order
to understand their existence, one must understand conquest, the taming of the
West, the Mexican-American War, and racism. To avoid this unpleasant reality, the...

III. Mexicanidad, Africanidad

6. Multiracial Macho: Kemo the Blaxican’s Hip-Hop Masculinity

A Día de los Muertos calavera with the name Blaxican is the dominant
image on the inside cover art for Kemo the Blaxican’s second CD, Not So Rich and
Famous (2007). Th e artist reproduces the skull repeatedly as the central figure on a
new one dollar bill. Th e skull looks a great deal like Kemo himself as photographed in
the liner notes to the CD: afro, prominent eyes, and goatee. The dollar identifies and...

7. The Rap on Chicano/Mexicano and Black Masculinity: Gender and Cross-Cultural Exchange

The lyrics of black and Chicano/Mexicano rap artists present a number
of images of manhood. Th is chapter examines how these artists characterize the
actions of men, and how they define masculinity. Our analysis of lyrics to popular
rap music from 1990 to 2002 shows that black and Chicano/Mexicano rap artists
both challenge and affirm the dominant construct of masculinity and male power. We...

8. “Soy la Kalle”: Radio, Reggaetón, and Latin@ Identity

On any given day during the winter and spring of 2006, Don Omar’s
anthem “Reggaetón Latino” would boom from hundreds of car stereos in South
Chicago, Humboldt Park, Pilsen, and elsewhere in Chicago. Young Latin@s tuned into
WVIV/WVIX, “La Kalle,” heard Don Omar and collaborators proclaim the power
of reggaetón, which in their words is the voice that represents Latin@s...

IV. Hip-Hop and Justice

9. Teaching Hip-Hop: A Pedagogy for Social Justice

Education does more than help students memorize facts and formulas
or prepare them for the workforce. It builds identity and prepares us for citizenship.
Students of color have been denied opportunities to create and experiment with
identity in Eurocentric classrooms that rarely affirm the existence and importance of
African, American indigenous, Asian, and mixed-race peoples. Moreover, in a hostile...

Afterword: Hip-Hop and Freedom-Dreaming in the Mexican Diaspora

In 1991 revolutionary rap group Public Enemy refused to perform in
the state of Arizona as long as that state did not recognize the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. holiday. Their song “By the Time I Get to Arizona” reflects an important
moment in anticolonial, anticapitalist politics in the United States. The song
reflects the culture wars and ideological battles that roiled the United States during...

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